Quotes About Church

We've no quarrel with the Church, you know, if she'll stick to her business and leave us to ours." "My dear man, if you can cure sin with an injection, I shall be only too pleased.

From time to time complaints are made about the ringing of church bells. It seems strange that a generation which tolerates the uproar of the internal combustion engine and the wailing of the jazz band should be so sensitive to the one loud noise that is made to the glory of God. England, alone in the world, has perfected the art of change-ringing and the true ringing of bells by rope and wheel and will not lightly surrender her unique heritage.

Taking the 'desert island challenge' which leads Christians to submit their family life to Sola Scriptura inevitably leads them to desire to submit their corporate worship to Sola Scriptura. (Excerpt from the forward of How God Wants Us to Worship Him by Joseph C. Morecraft)

Just as the medieval church cut off the congregation from participating in the sung worship of the service, today many well-meaning Christian leaders have reconstructed a sung worship wherein congregational participation does not matter.

Dag insists that all dogs secretly speak the English language and subscribe to the morals and beliefs of the Unitarian church...

we lost money at church bingos and ate catfish deep-fried in lard.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints identified the Maya as one of the lost tribes of Israel, the Lamanites, as chronicled in The Book of Mormon, published in 1830.

Your grandmother sent me to church every day, and it did me no harm. It was in church that I was converted to atheism. Also, it's a wise hedge. I myself might take it up on my deathbed, just in case.

we've come to understand sin as a kind of moral failing, but that interpretation actually comes from the power structures of the church and religious authorities. If you can convince somebody that they are inherently impure and that there is a mistake at the center of their being, then sin becomes a wrongdoing that deserves blame.

She looked, Inspector Curry reflected, exactly as the relict of a canon of the Established Church should look—which was almost odd, because so few people ever did look like what they really were. Even the tight line of her lips had an ascetic ecclesiastical flavour. She expressed Christian Endurance, and possibly Christian Fortitude. But not, Curry thought, Christian Charity.

But I thought I might have to go to church on Sunday, and although the Archbishop has said one needn't, I still think that the more old-fashioned clergy expect one to wear a hat. But

It was old Scrymgour. Somebody looked into his church one day. He was leaning out of the pulpit and preaching fervently to a couple of old charwomen. He was shaking his finger at them and saying, 'Aha! I know what you are thinking. You think that the Great Ahasuerus of the First Lesson was Artaxerxes the Second. But he wasn't!' And then with enormous triumph, 'He was Artaxerxes the Third.

If you come to a Vicarage, you ought to be prepared to find a Vicar.

The passing on of Tradition includes, therefore, the passing on of fitting language about its content, and it is this language -- not Tradition itself -- which "develops," in so doing not changing apostolic truth as consciously entertained by the mind of the Church but amplifying its expression.

Postapostolically, the Spirit's assistance is given to the Church not only that she may guard the apostolic deposit but also that she may make it bear fruit in minds and hearts.

I learned more stuff in church than I did in the world.

The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion. In a free society these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.

But it's a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life." -Damien

I'm a practical man, Haleola. It's true, I want to save souls. But it's a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life. If I can provide some comfort, some ease of life for those about to lose theirs, how could I hesitate to try?

I felt responsible to use my gifts, but in future churches, that pointed in the direction of children's or music ministry. But, like many women in the church whom I knew, I felt neither a call nor a predisposition to children or song.

You simply cannot be a disciple without being a missionary—a sent one. For way too long discipleship has been limited to issues relating to our own personal morality and worked out in the context of the four walls of the church with its privatized religion.

So a working definition of missional church is a community of God's people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God's mission to the world. In other words, the church's true and authentic organizing principle is mission.

if the church fails to make the shift to apostolic movements again, Christian influence in Western culture will continue to fade, and church attendance will remain in its current trajectory of decline. All we can say in writing this book is, not on our shift! Not if we can help it.

A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling. . . . [We must] play down our longing for certainty, accept what is risky, and live by improvisation and experiment. Hans Küng, The Church as the People of God